Without parallel across the world
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With this article, the Church News begins a series of articles about missionary service in its varied aspects, including the call to prepare worthy missionaries able to teach by the Spirit, as well as opportunities for service by seniors.
After waiting the better part of a day for family and friends to gather last March, David Hansen could endure the tension no longer and at the first reasonable moment, ripped open the letter from 47 E. South Temple.
"You have been assigned to labor in the England Birmingham Mission," he read aloud, his eyes suddenly blurring.
A sense of reverent jubilation fell over the group of several dozen, punctured occasionally by sniffles and tears. Choked with emotion, David struggled to continue.
Few experiences in life match the sheer, explosive excitement of receiving a mission call. A similar scene is repeated every week as approximately 500 other young men and women and seniors throughout the Church receive mission calls.
The missionary effort of the Church is unprecedented in the world. That young men and women, as well as senior couples and senior sisters, would dedicate their time and resources to proclaiming a message of hope and peace and salvation or render service on such an exhaustive scale is without equal or parallel.
Today, there are 53,000 missionaries serving throughout the world with callings signed by President Gordon B. Hinckley. This army of missionaries is catching the attention of newspapers and television stations around the world. Somewhere in the world — sometimes weekly, sometimes daily — news reports pop up tracing the steps of a missionary companionship, detailing their activities, disappointments and successes. Reports are spiced with interviews asking the missionaries' feelings and personal experiences.
A recent account in the Prague Post, an English newspaper from the Czech Republic, chronicled the work of Elders Jake Kunz and Chad Johnson. Following the elders across the "crowded Malostranske namesti," the reporter captured conversations between the missionaries and contacts on the street.
"What are you doing here?" responded one man after saying he vaguely remembered reading something about the Church several years earlier.
A Chinese television station in Toronto captured Elders Daniel Schow and Chad Allen Lindstrom of the Canada Toronto East Mission teaching English classes and tracting on the streets of Chinatown. They were invited to the television studio where they were interviewed by Rebecca Lui, a talk show moderator. They answered questions about their missions, families and schooling with charm and a sense of joy, said an observing senior missionary couple.
In many respects, the Hansen family mirrors so many other missionary-minded families. David, the youngest child of Kent and Paula Hansen, joins three older sisters who served missions.
Kent served a mission in the Colorado-New Mexico area from 1959-61 as a young man. He takes some honor in the fact that during his time, "We opened Utah" to missionary work.
After retiring from a career in marketing, Kent and his wife, Paula, left their home in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to visit family in Salt Lake City while volunteering in the Church Public Affairs Department for several months.
They submitted their mission papers and, for a time, it looked like they would receive their calling the same day as their 19-year-old son.
As it turned out, they received their calling to serve in the Baltic Mission of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia a week earlier than David received his call to England.
On the day David received his calling, a gathering was promptly organized in which family and friends, including some of David's classmates from BYU, assembled in the home of an older brother.
To include family members who could not be there, three cell phones were positioned like microphones to connect a sister in Seattle, Wash., two brothers in Iowa, and 12 young men assembled in the bishop's office in the Cedar Falls Ward.
The Hansens enter the Missionary Training Center in June. David leaves the next day for the Missionary Training Center in England.
Such is the exhilarating joy of being called to serve as an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ.
While there are many missions, they are divided into four categories: full-time proselytizing, senior couple, senior sister and service missions.
Young men and young women serve proselytizing missions. Senior couples and single senior sisters also serve proselytizing missions, but may serve in a variety of other capacities, including family history, humanitarian welfare and visitors centers.
Others unable to leave their homes, or who cannot serve 40 hours a week, have opportunity to fill service missions, which include nearly every possible skill or ability.
Missionary work has always been a part of the Church. From the earliest days when Samuel Smith, younger brother of the Prophet Joseph Smith, filled a knapsack with newly printed copies of the Book of Mormon and headed into the Palmyra countryside, to the meeting in the Kirtland Temple when the Prophet Joseph whispered in the ear of Heber C. Kimball that the Spirit directed him to England, to the 30,000 who will enter Missionary Training Centers worldwide this year, Church leaders have taken seriously the charge to take the gospel to all the earth — teaching in the languages of the people.
While missionary service has always demanded the highest quality of sacrifice, the call today is to improve missionary service by teaching more purely by the Holy Ghost.
"This work is rigorous," said President Gordon B. Hinckley during the Jan. 11, 2003, Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting. "It demands strength and vitality. It demands mental sharpness and capacity. It demands faith, desire and consecration. It demands clean hands and a pure heart."
President Hinckley continued, "The time has come when we must raise the standards of those who are called . . . as ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . We simply cannot permit those who have not qualified themselves as to worthiness to go into the world to speak the glad tidings of the gospel."
"Brethren," said Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve in his October 2002 general conference address, "today we are fighting a battle that in many ways is more perilous, more fraught with danger than the battle between the Nephites and the Lamanites. Our enemy is cunning and resourceful. We fight against Lucifer. . . .
"What we need now is the greatest generation of missionaries in the history of the Church. We need worthy, qualified, spiritually energized missionaries," he said.
Continuing, he added, "We need vibrant, thinking, passionate missionaries who know how to listen to and respond to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. This isn't a time for spiritual weaklings."
Turning to parents and leaders in his April 2005 general conference address, Elder Ballard said, "Our responsibility . . . is to kindle that light in our youth until the flame of testimony burns deep within their hearts and souls and then to encourage each one of them to take that flame and use it to help kindle the Light of Christ in others."
For the Hansens, that light was kindled in their children by being missionaries wherever they lived, which often included caring for missionaries and sharing the gospel with friends in their home.
"We are willing to serve anywhere," said Brother Hansen. "We were hoping for a challenging mission. We love to proclaim the gospel."
E-mail to: shaun@desnews.com
